Websites can’t resist the headlines. “You Need $77K/Year to Afford Washington, D.C.’s Rent.” “These Are the 13 Cities Where Millennials Can’t Afford a Home.” Or this line: “the income needed for a two-bedroom apartment is $58,320.”
The general point of these articles is true: D.C., like some other big cities, is very expensive to live in. Some of the policy implications of these arguments are also true and important: D.C. should remove its height limits, and suburban D.C. counties should remove zoning restrictions. (As I understand it, my county in Maryland allows only one in-law suite or above-garage apartment per block, if this unit is rented out.)
But the statistical claims in these articles are typically misleading, and they grossly overstate how expensive it is to live in the D.C. area.
First of all, these articles tend to focus on living in the actual District of Columbia while working in D.C. This is not an accurate representation of the people who work in D.C. About 650,000 people live in the actual district. Fairfax County, Va., and Montgomery Co. Md., (both of which have many metro stops) each have more than a million residents. Between Arlington, Falls Church, Alexandria, and PG County, there’s another 1.3 million or so people.
If you’re going to measure the affordability of D.C. based on D.C. salaries, it’s largely meaningless to not examine these neighboring municipalities.
Also, these articles tend to look at the median price for a rental. One recent study looks at a figure called “Fair Market Rate,” which is pegged to the 40th percentile rental price.
D.C. is not Lake Wobegon. Not all its residents get to live in above-average housing. By definition, half of the city will live in an apartment that charges sub-median rent. And a full 40 percent of residents (not even counting those who get discounts or live in rent-controlled units) will pay below the official “Fair Market Rent.”
A worker in his or her early 20s is likely — by virtue of his or her youth and relative inexperience — to earn a sub-median salary. Earning a sub-median salary and consequently living in a sub-median apartment isn’t something that makes D.C. unlivable. It’s almost a definitional matter.
Also, there’s something called roommates. I have had roommates my entire time in the D.C. area except for a sad three months between when my brother moved out in late 2005 and my wedding in early 2006. I actually just counted, and the mean size of my household in every month since I graduated college is 4.34 people.
A two bedroom, FMR, in the actual District, according to one of these studies is $1,458 per month. Divide it by two and its $729 per person. That means if your income is $29,160, and you want to keep your rent below 30 percent of your income, you can afford to live in a two bedroom — in the District — that’s more expensive than 40 percent of your fellow residents’ homes.
I think if I look back at my entire list of home rentals (two and three-bedrooms in D.C.) and purchases (in D.C. and in MoCo), my rent or the price of the house have been at or below the median for the relevant jurisdiction. (One place was rent-controlled.) If I told you my housing budget for any of those years and locales, you might say I “couldn’t afford” to live where I was living.
Fact is, not all of us in the D.C. area can be above average. That doesn’t mean we can’t live here.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
